By Jeff McDonald, Staff Writer | San Antonio Express-News (SAEN), 2026-04-18 12:37:49
热身结束后，圣安东尼奥马刺队前锋维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) 在周五（2026年4月10日）于圣安东尼奥霜银中心对阵达拉斯独行侠队的主场比赛前与球迷击掌。
在来到美国的三年大部分时间里，维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) 每天投入工作时，头顶都笼罩着过去的幽灵，无处不在，无法逃避。
五面冠军旗帜悬挂在霜银中心 (Frost Bank Center) 的上空，文班亚马每晚都在这里作为马刺队的全明星中锋挥汗如雨。球队的训练馆里也挂着五面复制品，从九月到次年春天，文班亚马醒着的大部分时间都在那里度过。
当这位身高 7 英尺 4 英寸的法国人抬头仰望这些旗帜时，无论身处何地，他看到的都是昔日的荣光。
以及未来的承诺。
“我真的不由自主地去梦想它，”22 岁的文班亚马在迎来他的首次 NBA 季后赛前夕说道，“这些时刻，正是你一年到头，乃至职业生涯至今所有努力的目标。在来到这里之前，我们还是孩子时就在梦想着季后赛了。”
周日，在注定将变得喧闹且饥渴的充满嘉年华色彩的霜银中心，文班亚马和马刺队准备将这个梦想的第一部分转变为绚丽多彩的现实。
在经历了六个在篮球荒野中徘徊的夏天，以及连续六个在四月初便戛然而止的赛季后，马刺队重返西部季后赛。
对于排名第二的马刺队来说，对阵第七种子波特兰开拓者队的第一场比赛，不仅代表着重返 NBA 强队行列这段漫长而艰辛旅程的终点。
它更代表了某种更为持久的潜力。
“我们期待能走得很远，”二年级后卫斯蒂芬·卡斯尔 (Stephon Castle) 说道。
在 1998 年至 2019 年间的 22 年里，NBA 季后赛被视为圣安东尼奥篮球迷与生俱来的权利。
就像圣诞节、复活节或劳动节一样，季后赛似乎预先印在了阿拉莫城售出的每一份日历上。二十多年来，这座城市一年一度的嘉年华 (Fiesta) 庆典感觉就像是马刺队季后赛胜利后的派对。
马刺队连续 22 次打进季后赛的纪录至今仍是 NBA 纪录，可能永远不会被超越。目前联盟最长纪录的保持者——波士顿凯尔特人队——还需要十年时间才能追平。
圣安东尼奥马刺队前锋维克托·文班亚马 (1) 在周五（2026年4月10日）于圣安东尼奥霜银中心对阵达拉斯独行侠队的比赛中上场时，与中锋卢克·科内特 (Luke Kornet) 击掌。马刺队以 139-120 获胜。
“这里有着悠久的历史，我们非常了解这座城市和那种怀旧情结，”马刺队主教练米奇·约翰逊 (Mitch Johnson) 说道，他在执教球队的首个完整赛季便带领球队杀入了季后赛。
王朝在一砖一瓦中瓦解。
裂痕始于 2016 年蒂姆·邓肯 (Tim Duncan) 的退役，他是队史最伟大的球员，也是马刺队五夺 NBA 总冠军阵容中唯一的全勤成员。
接着是 2018 年那个多灾多难的夏天，整座大厦在短短几个月内轰然倒塌。
马努·吉诺比利 (Manu Ginobili) 退役。托尼·帕克 (Tony Parker) 远走夏洛特，在那里度过了一个令人费解的赛季后也宣布结束职业生涯。科怀·伦纳德 (Kawhi Leonard)——圣安东尼奥大多数人期望他能在未来十年接过马刺统治地位火炬的新星——强行要求交易至多伦多。
2018-19 赛季，马刺队在德马尔·德罗赞 (DeMar DeRozan) 和拉马库斯·阿尔德里奇 (LaMarcus Aldridge) 的带领下，步履蹒跚地最后一次闯入季后赛，最终在七场系列赛中负于崛起的丹佛掘金队。
那是这支球队和这座城市最后一次品尝季后赛的滋味。
直到这个周日。
“这是你小时候看着长大的东西，你看着所有这些比赛，”马刺队后卫德文·瓦塞尔 (Devin Vassell) 说道，他正准备迎接职业生涯六个赛季以来的首次季后赛，“对我们来说，能身处其中是一个激动人心的时刻，你能感觉到。球迷们准备好了。球队准备好了。我们也准备好了。”
对于马刺队来说，走出永无止境的选秀抽签泥潭的道路在 2023 年 5 月豁然开朗，当时他们抽中了状元签，并获得了选择文班亚马的权利。这位来自法国的天才少年被誉为自勒布朗·詹姆斯 (LeBron James) 以来最能改变球队命运的新秀。
即使有了文班亚马的加入，起步依然缓慢。
文班亚马的新秀赛季，马刺队赢了 22 场比赛，较前一赛季毫无进步。在文班亚马的第二个 NBA 赛季，尽管他因血栓问题缺席了最后两个月，胜场数还是增加到了 34 场。
时光飞逝一年，马刺队已成为一支取得 62 胜的球队，并以竞争者的姿态——即使不是夺冠大热门——进入季后赛。
“我们不想改变自我，”全明星后卫达龙·福克斯 (De’Aaron Fox) 说道，他在 2025 年 2 月通过与萨克拉门托国王队的交易加盟，加速了马刺队的重建，“我们获得二号种子是有原因的。我们只想把我们所做的做得更好，并且打得更具侵略性。”
去年秋天，当马刺队开启文班亚马的第三个训练营时，几乎没有人预见到即将到来的爆发。
约翰逊在接替名人堂教练格雷格·波波维奇 (Gregg Popovich) 全职执教后的首个训练营目标相当谦虚。
“当你跑马拉松时，你必须先跑完第一圈，”39 岁的约翰逊说道，“这是我们在一起的第一个训练营，我们真的还一事无成。我们只是想拥有一个非常棒的训练营，并确立我们的篮球风格。”
是文班亚马首先重新定义了可能性的界限。
去年 10 月，当被问及对于一支自他 15 岁还在法国起就没进过季后赛的球队来说，什么样的赛季才算成功时，文班亚马给出了一个数字。
“成功将是打进季后赛，而不是附加赛，”文班亚马当时说道，“所以我猜那意味着第六种子。”
在当时看来，这似乎是一个相当宏伟的目标。而在 62 胜之后，这被证明是一个低得离谱的标准。
既然季后赛已经到来，文班亚马和马刺队正在克制那种自然而然产生的急躁情绪。
文班亚马说，是的，他仍然在梦想着周日季后赛开打后会发生什么。
“但我们必须脚踏实地，活在当下，”他说道。
然而，如果马刺队这个令人惊讶的赛季教会了他们什么，那就是志存高远的价值。
有多高？
如果文班亚马真的想知道，他所要做的就是抬头仰望。
圣安东尼奥马刺队前锋文班亚马 (1) 在周五（2026年4月10日）于圣安东尼奥霜银中心对阵达拉斯独行侠队的第一节比赛中扣篮。
由生成式人工智能翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准。
点击查看原文：Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs are ready for their postseason closeup
Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs are ready for their postseason closeup
After warming up, San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama high-fives fans as he walks to the locker room before a home game against the Dallas Mavericks at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Friday, April 10, 2026.
For the better part of his three years in America, Victor Wembanyama has gone to work each day with a specter of the past hanging overhead, omnipresent and inescapable.
Five championship banners rest in the rafters of the Frost Bank Center, where Wembanyama toils nightly as the Spurs’ All-Star center. Five replicas are posted in the team’s practice facility, where Wembanyama spends most waking moments from September through the springtime.
When the 7-foot-4 Frenchman looks up at them, in either location, he sees the glory of what once was.
And the promise of what might be.
“I really can’t help but dream about it,” the 22-year-old Wembanyama said on the brink of his first NBA playoffs. “These moments, it’s really what you work for all year, but also your whole career before now. We’re dreaming of the playoffs as kids before we come here.”
Sunday, inside what is certain to be a raucous and ravenous Fiesta-colored Frost Bank Center, Wembanyama and the Spurs are set to transform the first part of that dream into a technicolor reality.
After six summers spent wandering the basketball wilderness, and six straight seasons ended by early April, the Spurs are back in the Western Conference playoffs.
For the second-seeded Spurs, Game 1 against the seventh-seeded Portland Trail Blazers does not only represent the end of the long and arduous journey back to NBA respectability.
It represents the potential for something much, much more enduring.
“We expect to make a long run of it,” second-year guard Stephon Castle said.
For 22 years between 1998 and 2019, the NBA playoffs were considered a birthright for basketball fans in San Antonio.
Like Christmas or Easter or Labor Day, postseason games might as well have come pre-printed on every calendar sold in the Alamo City. For more than two decades, the city’s annual Fiesta celebration felt like an afterparty for the Spurs’ playoff triumphs.
The Spurs’ streak of 22 consecutive postseason appearances remains an NBA record, one that might never be equaled. The owner of the league’s longest current streak — the Boston Celtics — still has a decade to go to match it.
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) slaps hands with center Luke Kornet (7) as he checks into the game against the Dallas Mavericks at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Friday, April 10, 2026. The Spurs won 139-120.
“There’s a long history here, and we’re very well aware of the city and that nostalgia,” said Spurs coach Mitch Johnson, who is steering the club into the playoffs in his first full season at the helm.
The dynasty fell apart brick by brick.
The cracks started with the 2016 retirement of Tim Duncan, the greatest player in franchise history and the only member of all five of the Spurs’ NBA championship squads.
Then came the ill-fated summer of 2018, when the whole house came crumbling down in the span of a few head-spinning months.
Manu Ginobili retired. Tony Parker left for Charlotte, where he spent one inexplicable season before calling it a career himself. Kawhi Leonard, the rising star most in San Antonio expected to carry the Spurs’ mantle of dominance into the next decade, forced a trade to Toronto.
The Spurs limped to one more playoff appearance in 2018-19 with DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge as linchpins, losing a seven-game series to an upstart Denver club.
That was the team and city’s last taste of the postseason.
Until Sunday.
“It’s something that you watch as a kid and you grow up and you see all these games and everything,” said Spurs guard Devin Vassell, who is poised for the first playoff appearance of his six-season pro career. “For us to be living in it, it’s an exciting time and you can feel it. The fans are ready. The organization’s ready. We’re ready.”
For the Spurs, the pathway out of perpetual draft lottery drawings burst wide open in May of 2023, when they won the No. 1 pick and the right to select Wembanyama, a teenage phenom out of France billed as the most franchise-changing prospect to enter the NBA since LeBron James.
Even with Wembanyama in the fold, the going was slow at first.
The Spurs won 22 games Wembanyama’s rookie season, a zero-win improvement from the season before. That total jumped to 34 in Wembanyama’s second NBA campaign, even as he missed the final two months with a blood clot issue.
Flash forward a year, and the Spurs are a 62-win team that enters the playoffs as — if not a championship favorite — a bona fide contender.
“We don’t want to change who we are,” said All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox, whose arrival via trade with Sacramento in February 2025 fast-tracked the Spurs’ rebuild. “We got the No. 2 seed for a reason. We just want to do what we do better and with more physicality.”
When the Spurs arrived for the start of Wembanyama’s third training camp last fall, few were predicting the surge that was coming.
Johnson’s goals for his first training camp since taking over full-time for Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich were modest enough.
“When you are running a marathon, you just got to get through the first lap,” the 39-year-old Johnson said. “This was our first training camp together and we had accomplished nothing, literally. We just wanted to have a really good training camp and establish our brand of basketball.”
It was Wembanyama who first reset the parameters of what might be possible.
Asked in October what would qualify as a successful season for a team that hadn’t made the postseason since he was a 15-year-old in France, Wembanyama put a number on it.
“Success would be getting into the playoffs and not the play-in,” Wembanyama said then. “So I guess that means sixth seed.”
It seemed like a lofty enough goal at the time. Sixty-two wins later, it turned out to be a laughably low bar to clear.
Now that the playoffs are here, Wembanyama and the Spurs are battling the natural urge to get ahead of themselves.
Yes, Wembanyama said, he still dreams about what might come next once the postseason tips off Sunday.
“But we have to stay grounded, stay in the moment,” he said.
If the Spurs’ surprising season taught them anything, however, it is the value of aiming higher.
How high?
If Wembanyama really wants to know, all he has to do is look up.
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) dunks on the Dallas Mavericks during the first quarter at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Friday, April 10, 2026.
By Jeff McDonald, Staff Writer, via San Antonio Express-News